[2] [‘Cry of the Spring Flower-seller,’ by W. C. Bennett.]
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 5, 1846.]
Yes, you were right, my Ba—our meeting was on the 20th of last May: the next letter I received was the 14th and that ran in my head, no doubt, yesterday. You must have many such mistakes to forgive in me when I undertake to talk and ‘stare’ at the same time ... well for me if they are no more serious mistakes!
I referred to my letters—and found much beside the date to reflect on. I will tell you. Would it not be perilous in some cases,—many cases—to contrast the present with the very early Past: the first time, even when there is abundant fruit, with the dewy springing and blossoming? One would confess to a regret at the vanishing of that charm, at least, if it were felt to be somehow vanished out of the present. And, looking upon our experience as if it were another’s,—undoubtedly the peril seems doubled—with that five months’ previous correspondence ... only then,—after all the curiosity, and hope and fear,—the first visit to come! And after,—shortly after,—you know—the heightened excitement that followed ... I should not believe in the case of another,—or should not have believed,—that the strange delight could last ... no more than I should think it reasonable to wonder, or even grieve, that it did not last—so long as other delights came in due succession. Now, hear the truth! I never, God knows, felt the joy of being with you as I felt it yesterday—the fruit of my happiness has grown under the blossom, lifting it and keeping it as a coronet—not one feeling is lost, and the new feelings are infinite. Ah, my Ba, can you wonder if I seem less inclined to see the adorable kindness in those provisions, and suppositions, and allowances for escape, change of mind &c., you furnish me with,—than to be struck at the strange fancy which, as I said, insists on my being free to leave off breathing vital air the moment it shall so please me?
And when I spoke of ‘dishonouring suppositions’ I had not the faintest approximation to an idea of standing in your eyes for a magnanimous keeper of promises, vow-observer, and the rest. All that is profoundly pitiable! But to change none of my views of the good of this life and the next, and yet to give up my love on the view (for instance) which sees that good in money, or worldly advancement,—what is that if not dishonouring?
All the while, I know your thought, your purpose in it all,—I believe and am sure—and I bless you from my heart—you will soon know, what you have to know—I believe, beforehand, I repeat.
I am rather out of spirits to-day—thus I feel toward you when at all melancholy ... you would undo me in withdrawing from me your help, undo me, I feel! When, as ordinarily, I am cheerful, I have precisely the same conviction. Does that prove nothing, my Ba?
Well, I give up proving, or trying to prove anything—from the beginning I abjured mere words—and now, much more!
Let me kiss you, ever best and dearest! My life is in the hand you call ‘mine,’—if that hand would ‘shake’ less from letting it fall, I earnestly pray God may relieve you of it nor ever let you be even aware of what followed your relief! For what should one live or die in this world?
I am wholly yours—
Did I not meet two of your brothers yesterday in the Hall? Pray take care of this cold wind—be satisfied with the good deeds of the last few days.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]
Dearest, it has just come into my head that I should like to carry this letter to the post myself—but no, I shall not be able. Probably the post is far out of reach, and even if it were within reach, my grand scheme of walking in the street is scarcely a possible thing to-day, for I must keep watch in the house from two till five for Lady Margaret Cocks, an old friend of mine, who was kind to me when I was a child, in the country, and has not forgotten me since, when, two months in the year, she has been in the habit of going to London. A good, worthy person, with a certain cultivation as to languages and literature, but quite manquée on the side of the imagination ... talking of the poets, as a blind woman of colours, calling ‘Pippa Passes’ ‘pretty and odd,’ and writing herself ‘poems’ in heaps of copy books which every now and then she brings to show me ... ‘odes’ to Hope and Patience and all the cardinal virtues, with formulas of ‘Begin my muse’ in the fashion ended last century. She has helped to applaud and scold me since I could walk and write verses; and when I was so wicked as to go to dissenting chapels besides, she reproached me with tears in her eyes; but they were tears of earnest partizanship, and not of affection for me, ... she does not love me after all, nor guess at my heart, and I do not love her, I feel. Woe to us! for there are good and unlovable people in the world, and we cannot help it for our lives.
In the midst of writing which, comes the Leeds Miss Heaton, who used to send me those long confidential letters à faire frémir, and beg me to call her ‘Ellen,’ and as this is the second time that she has sent up her card, in an accidental visit to London, I thought I would be good-natured for once, and see her. An intelligent woman, with large black eyes and a pleasant voice, and young ... manners provincial enough, for the rest, and talking as if the world were equally divided between the ‘Congregationalists’ and the ‘Churchpeople.’ She assured me that ‘Dr. Vaughan was very much annoyed’ at the article on my poems which ‘crept’ into his review, and that it was fully intended to recant at length on the first convenient opportunity. ‘And really,’ she said, ‘it seems to me that you have as many admirers among churchmen as among dissenters.’! There’s glory!—and I kept my countenance. Lost it though, five minutes afterwards, when she observed pathetically, that a ‘friend of hers who had known Mr. Browning quite intimately, had told her he was an infidel ... more’s the pity, when he has such a genius.’ I desired the particular information of your intimate friend, a little more warmly perhaps than was necessary, ... but what could be expected of me, I wonder?
I shall write again to you to-night, you know, and this is enough for two o’clock. Now will you get my letter on this Tuesday? Do you think of me ... love me? And are you well to-day? The flowers look beautiful though you put their heads into the water instead of their feet.
Your Ba.
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]
But my own only beloved, I surely did not speak too ‘insistingly’ yesterday. I shrank from your question as you put it, because you put it wrong. If you had asked me instead, whether I meant to keep my promise to you, I would have answered ‘yes’ without hesitation: but the form you chose, referred to you more than to me, and was indeed and indeed a foolish form of a question, my own dearest! For the rest ... ah, you do not see my innermost nature, ... you!—you are happily too high, and cannot see into it ... cannot perceive how the once elastic spring is broken with the long weights! ... you wonder that it should drop, when you, who lifted it up, do not hold it up! you cannot understand! ... you wonder! And I wonder too ... on the other side! I wonder how I can feel happy and alive ... as I can, through you! how I can turn my face toward life again ... as I can, for you! ... and chiefly of all, how I can ever imagine ... as I do, sometimes ... that such a one as you, may be happy perhaps with such a one as I! ... happy!
Do not judge me severely, you, to whom I have given both hands, for your own uses and ends!—you, who are more to me than I can be to you, even by your own statement—better to me than life ... or than death even, as death seemed to me before I knew you.
Certainly I love you enough, and trust you enough, if you knew what God knows. Yet, ... ‘now hear me.’ I shall not be able to please you, I think, by a firm continued belief of this engagement’s being justifiable, until the event wholly has justified it ... I mean, ... until I shall see you not less happy for having lived near me for six months or a year—should God’s mercy permit such justification. Do not blame me. I cannot help it ... I would, if I could, help it. Every time you say, as in this dearest letter, ever dearest, that you have been happy on such a day through being with me, I have a new astonishment—it runs through me from head to feet ... I open my eyes astonished, whenever my sun rises in the morning, as if I saw an angel in the sun. And I do see him, in a sense. Ah—if you make a crime to me of my astonishments, it is all over indeed! can I help it, indeed? So forgive me! let it not be too great a wrong to be covered by a pardon. Think that we are different, you and I—and do not think that I would send you to ‘money and worldly advancement’ ... do not think so meanly of my ambition for you.
Dearest dearest!—do you ever think that I could fail to you? Do you doubt for a moment, ever ... ever, ... that my hand might peradventure ‘shake less’ in being loosed from yours? Why, it might—and would! Dead hands do not shake at all,—and only so, could my hand be loosed from yours through a failing on my part. It is your hand, while you hold it: while you choose to hold it, and while it is a living hand.
Do you know what you are to me, ... you? We talk of the mild weather doing me good ... of the sun doing me good ... of going into the air as a means of good! Have you done me no good, do you fancy, in loving me and lifting me up? Has the unaccustomed divine love and tenderness been nothing to me? Think! Mrs. Jameson says earnestly ... said to me the other day ... that ‘love was only magnetism.’ And I say in my heart, that, magnet or no magnet, I have been drawn back into life by your means and for you ... that I see the dancing mystical lights which are seen through the eyelids ... and I think of you with an unspeakable gratitude always—always! No other could have done this for me—it was not possible, except by you.
But, no—do not, beloved, wish the first days here again. You saw your way better in them than I did. I had too bitter feelings sometimes: they looked to me like an epigram of destiny! as if ‘He who sitteth on high should laugh her to scorn—should hold her in derision’—as why not? My best hope was that you should be my friend after all. We will not have them back again ... those days! And in these, you do not love me less but more? Would it be strange to thank you? I feel as if I ought to thank you!
I have written, written, and have more to write, yet must end here now. The letter I wrote this morning and gave to my sister to leave in the post, she was so naughty as to forget, and has been well scolded as a consequence; but the scolding did not avail, I fear, to take the letter to you to-night; there is no chance! Mrs. Jameson came to-day when I was engaged with Lady Margaret Cocks and I could not see her—and Mr. Kenyon came, when I could see him and was glad. I am tired with my multitude of visitors—oh, so tired!
Why are you melancholy, dear, dearest? Was it my fault? could that be? no—you were unwell, I think ... I fear. Say how you are; and believe that you may answer your own questions, for that I never can fail to you. If two persons have one will on a matter of that sort, they need not be thwarted here in London—so answer your own questions.
Wholly and ever yours I am.
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, May 6, 1846.]
Dearest Ba let me [be] silent, as on other occasions, over what you promise: one reads of ‘a contest in generosity,’ and now this party was as determined to give, as that party not to accept—far from anything so graceful, I am compelled to clutch at the offering, I take all, because, because—because I must, now! May God requite you, my best beloved!
I met Mrs. Jameson last evening and she began just as I prophesied ... ‘but’ said she ‘I will tell you all when you come and breakfast with me on Thursday—which a note of mine now on its way to you, desires may happen!’
A large party at Chorley’s, and admirable music—not without a pleasant person or two. I wish you could hear that marvellous Pischek, with his Rhine songs, and Bohemian melodies. Then a Herr Kellerman told a kind of crying story on the violoncello, full of quiet pathos, and Godefroi—if they so spell him—harped like a God harping, immortal victorious music indeed! Altogether a notable evening ... oh, the black ingratitude of man ... these few words are the poor ‘set-off’ to this morning’s weary yawning, and stupefaction. To-night having to follow beside! So near you I shall be! Mrs. J. is to [be] at the Procters’ to-night too. Oh, by the way, and in the straight way to make Ba laugh ... Mrs. J.’s first word was ‘What? Are you married?’ She having caught a bit of Miss Chorley’s enquiry after ‘Mrs. Browning’s health’ i.e. my mother’s. Probably Miss Heaton’s friend, who is my intimate, heard me profess complete infidelity as to—homœopathy ... que sais-je? But of all accusations in the world ... what do you say to my having been asked if I was not the Author of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and ‘Othello’? A man actually asked me that, as I sate in Covent Garden Pit to see the second representation of ‘Strafford’—I supposed he had been set on by somebody, but the simple face looked too quiet for that impertinence—I was muffled up in a cloak, too; so I said ‘No—so far as I am aware.’ (His question was, ‘is not this Mr. Browning the author of &c. &c.’) After the play, all was made clear by somebody in Macready’s dressing room—two burlesques on Shakespeare were in the course of performance at some minor theatre by a Mr. Brown, or Brownley, or something Brown-like—and to these my friend had alluded.
So is begot, so nourished ‘il mondan rumore’—I, author of ‘Othello’!—when I can be, and am, and may tell Ba I am, her own, own
R.
The news about the post—the walk there which might have been,—that is pure delight! But take care, my all-precious love—festina lente. All the same, what a vision I have of the Bonnet!
Wednesday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 7, 1846.]
Now, dearest, you are close by and I am writing to you as if you were ever so far off. People are not always the better, you see, for being near one another. There’s a moral to put on with your gloves—and if you were not quite sufficiently frightened by Mrs. Jameson’s salutation, it may be of some use to you perhaps—who knows?
She left word yesterday that she should come to-day or to-morrow, and as to-day she didn’t, I shall hear of you from her to-morrow ... that is, if you go to her breakfast, which you will do I dare say, supposing that you are not perfectly ill and exhausted by what came before. Ah—you do not say how you are—and I know what that means. Even the music was half lost in the fatigue ... that is what you express by ‘stupefaction.’ And then to have to dine at Mr. Procter’s without music ... say how you are ... do not omit it this time.
Nor think that I shall forget how to-morrow is the seventh of May ... your month as you call it somewhere ... in Sordello, I believe ... so that I knew before, you had a birthday there—and I shall remember it to-morrow and send you the thoughts which are yours, and pray for you that you may be saved from March-winds ... ever dearest!
I am glad you heard the music after all: it was something to hear, as you describe it.
To-day I had a book sent to me from America by the poetess Mrs. Osgood. Did you ever hear of a poetess Mrs. Osgood? ... and her note was of the very most affectionate, and her book is of the most gorgeous, all purple and gold—and she tells me ... oh, she tells me ... that I ought to go to New York, only ‘to see Mr. Poe’s wild eyes flash through tears’ when he reads my verses. It is overcoming to think of, even ... isn’t it? Talking of poetesses, such as Mrs. Osgood and me, Miss Heaton, ... the friend of your intimate friend, ... told me yesterday that the poetess proper of the city of Leeds was ‘Mrs. A.’ ... ‘Mrs. A.?’ said I with an enquiring innocence. ‘Oh,’ she went on, (divining sarcasms in every breath I drew) ... ‘oh! I dare say, you wouldn’t admit her to be a real poetess. But as she lives in Leeds and writes verses, we call her our poetess! and then, really, Mrs. A. is a charming woman. She was a Miss Roberts ... and her ‘Spirit of the Woods,’ and of the ‘Flowers’ has been admired, I assure you.’ Well, in a moment I seemed to remember something,—because only a few months since, surely I had a letter from somebody who once was a spirit of the Woods or ghost of the Flowers. Still, I could not make out Mrs. A. ...! ‘Certainly’ I confessed modestly, ‘I never did hear of a Mrs. A. ... and yet, and yet’.... A most glorious confusion I was in ... when suddenly my visitor thought of spelling the name ... ‘H e y’ said she. Now conceive that! The Mrs. Hey who came by solution, had both written to me and sent me a book on the Lakes quite lately ... ‘by the author of the Spirit of the Woods’.... There was the explanation! And my Leeds visitor will go back and say that I denied all knowledge of the charming Mrs. A. the Leeds poetess, and that it was with the greatest difficulty I could be brought to recognise her existence. Oh, the arrogance and ingratitude of me! And Mrs. A. ... being ‘a churchwoman’ ... will expose me of course to the churchwardens! May you never fall into such ill luck! You could not expect me to walk to the post office afterwards—now could you?
What nonsense and foolishness I take it into my head to send you sometimes.
I was down-stairs to-day but not out of the house. Now you are talking, now you are laughing—I think that almost I can hear you when I listen hard ... at Mr. Procter’s!
Do you, on the other side, hear me? ... and how I am calling myself your very own
Ba.
Thursday.
[Post-mark, May 7, 1846.]
No, dearest,—I get Mrs. Jameson’s leave to put the breakfast off till to-morrow—and this morning, instead of resting as I had intended, I wisely went to town, to get a call on Forster off my mind—I have walked there and back again ... see the weakness you pity! I cheat you, my Ba, of all that pity ... yet when I have got it, however unjustly, I lay it to my heart.
And I was at Mrs. Procter’s last night—Kinglake and Chorley, with a little of Milnes and Coventry Patmore—but no Howitts: because they have a sick child,—dying, I am afraid. On my return I found a note from Horne, who is in London of a sudden for a week.
Oh,—The Daily News passes into the redoubtable hands of Mr. Dilke,—and the price is to be reduced to 2½d, in emulation of the system recently adopted by the French Journals. Forster continues to write, on the new Editor’s particular entreaty. I rather think the scheme will succeed, Dilke having the experience the present régime wants—he will buy his privileges cheaply too. So that Chorley may possibly be employed. Here ends my patronage of it, at all events—not another number do I groan over!
Patmore told me in his quiet way that his criticisms—his book on which he had been expending a world of pains, is altogether superseded by the appearance of ‘Ulrici on Shakespeare’—‘the very words of many of his more important paragraphs are the same.’ That astounds one a little, does it not?
And what, what do you suppose Tennyson’s business to have been at Dickens’—what caused all the dining and repining? He has been sponsor to Dickens’ child in company with Count D’Orsay, and accordingly the novus homo glories in the prænomina, Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens! Ah, Charlie, if this don’t prove to posterity that you might have been a Tennyson and were a D’Orsay—why excellent labour will have been lost! You observe, ‘Alfred’ is common to both the godfather and the—devil-father, as I take the Count to be: so Milnes has been goodnaturedly circulating the report that in good truth it is the Alfred of neither personage, but of—Mr. Alfred Bunn. When you remember what the form of sponsorship is, to what it pledges you in the ritual of the Church of England— —and then remember that Mr. Dickens is an enlightened Unitarian,—you will get a curious notion of the man, I fancy.
Have you not forgotten that birthday? Do, my Ba, forget it—my day, as I told you, is the 20th—my true, happiest day! But I thank you all I can, dearest—All good to me comes through you, or for you—every wish and hope ends in you. May God bless you, ever dear Ba.—
Your own R.
May 7th, 1846.
Beloved, my thoughts go to you this morning, loving and blessing you! May God bless you for both His worlds—not for this alone. For me, if I can ever do or be anything to you, it will be my uttermost blessing of all I ever knew, or could know, as He knows. A year ago, I thought, with a sort of mournful exultation, that I was pure of wishes. Now, they recoil back on me in a spring-tide ... flow back, wave upon wave, ... till I should lose breath to speak them! and it is nothing, to say that they concern another ... for they are so much the more intensely mine, and of me. May God bless you, very dear! dearest.
So I am to forget to-day, I am told in the letter. Ah! But I shall forget and remember what I please. In the meanwhile I was surprised while writing thus to you this morning ... as a good deed to begin with ... by Miss Bayley’s coming. Remembering the seventh of May I forgot Thursday, which she had named for her visit, and altogether she took me by surprise. I thought it was Wednesday! She came and then, Mr. Kenyon came, ... and as they both went down-stairs together, Mrs. Jameson came up. Miss Bayley is what is called strong-minded, and with all her feeling for art and Beauty, talks of utility like a Utilitarian of the highest, and professes to receive nothing without proof, like a reasoner of the lowest. She told me with a frankness for which I did not like her less, that she was a materialist of the strictest order, and believed in no soul and no future state. In the face of those conclusions, she said, she was calm and resigned. It is more than I could be, as I confessed. My whole nature would cry aloud against that most pitiful result of the struggle here—a wrestling only for the dust, and not for the crown. What a resistless melancholy would fall upon me if I had such thoughts!—and what a dreadful indifference. All grief, to have itself to end in!—all joy, to be based upon nothingness!—all love, to feel eternal separation under and over it! Dreary and ghastly, it would be! I should not have strength to love you, I think, if I had such a miserable creed. And for life itself, ... would it be worth holding on such terms,—with our blind Ideals making mocks and mows at us wherever we turned? A game to throw up, this life would be, as not worth playing to an end!
There’s a fit letter for the seventh of May!—but why was Thursday the seventh, and not Wednesday rather, which would have let me escape visitors? I thank God that I can look over the grave with you, past the grave, ... and hope to be worthier of you there at least.
Mrs. Jameson did not say much, being hoarse and weak with a cold, but she told me of having met you at dinner, and found you ‘very agreeable.’ Also, beginning by a word about Professor Longfellow, who has married, it appears, and is a tolerably merciful husband for a poet ... (‘solving the problem of the possibility of such a thing,’ said she!) ... beginning so, she dropped into the subject of marriage generally, and was inclined to repropose Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s septennial act ... which might be a reform perhaps! ... what do you think? Have I not, altogether, been listening to improving and memorable discourse on this seventh of May? The ninth’s will be more after my heart.
I like Mrs. Jameson, mind!—and I like her views on many subjects—exclusive of the septennial marriage act, though.
How you amuse me by your account of the sponsorship! the illustrious D’Orsay with his paletot reputation, in a cleft stick of Alfred ... Tennyson! Bunn in the distance! A curious combination it makes really ... and you read it like a vates that you are!—
So, good night—dearest!—I think of you behind all these passing clouds of subjects, my poet of the Lyre and Crown! Look down on your own
Ba.
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 8, 1846.]
‘Look down on you’—my Ba? I would die for you, with triumphant happiness, God knows, at a signal from your hand! But that,—look down,—never, though you bade me again and again, and in such words! I look up,—always up,—my Ba. When I indulge in my deepest luxury, I make you stand ... do you not know that? I sit, and my Ba chooses to let me sit, and stands by,—understanding all the same how the relation really is between us,—how I would, and do, kiss her feet,—my queen’s feet!
Do you feel for me so, my love? I seldom dare to try and speak to you of your love for me ... my love I am allowed to profess ... I could not steadily (I have tried, whether you noticed it or no, and could not,) say aloud ‘and you love me’! Because it is altogether a blessing of your gift,—irrespective of my love to you—however it may go to increase it. Here are the words however. Human conviction is weak enough, no doubt,—but, when I forget these words, and this answer of my heart to them,—I cannot say it—
May God bless you, dearest dearest,—my Ba! I was at Mrs. Jameson’s this morning—she spoke of you so as to make my heart tremble with very delight—I never liked her so much ... I may say, never liked her before—by comparison. She read me your three translations,—clearly feeling their rare beauty; and now,—let me clap hands, my Ba, and ask you who knows best? She means to print both versions—the blank verse and the latter rhymed one. Of course, of course! But she said so many things—I must tell you to-morrow,—if you remind me. She felt such gratifications, too, at your thinking her etching of St. Cecilia worthy to hang by your chair, in your sight. Do you know, Ba, at the end,—à propos of her breakfast, I fairly took her by both hands, and shook them with a cordiality which I just reflect, tardily, may subject the Literary Character to a possible misconstruction. ‘He must have wanted a breakfast,’ she will say!
I am going to the Museum on Monday with her, to see Italian prints. I like her very much. And after breakfast, Mr. Kenyon came in, and Mr. Bezzi—and Mr. K. means to make me go and see him next Monday also, I believe.
But my seeing, and hearing, and enjoying—Saturday is my day for all that? To-morrow—by this time!—too great happiness it is, I know.
And I, too, look long over the grave, to follow you, my own heart’s love. Let Mrs. Jameson repeal those acts,—limit the seven years to seven days or less,—what matters? If the seven days have to be endured because of a law,—then I see the weariness of course—but in our case, if a benevolent Legislature should inform me, now, that if I choose, I may decline visiting you to-morrow—
... Ah, nefandum,—kiss me, my own Ba, and let the world legislate and decree and relieve and be otherwise notable—so they let me be your own for ever
R.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]
Dearest when you use such words as ‘eligible ...’ (investment ... was it?) and I do not protest seriously and at length, it is through the very absurdity and unnaturalness ... as if you were to say that the last comet was made of macaroni, and Arago stood by, he would not think it worth while to confute you. Talking the worldly idiom, as you will tell me you just meant to do in those words, and considering the worldly considerations, why still the advantage is with you—I can do nothing that I can see, but stand in your sunshine. I solemnly assure you that only the apparent fact of your loving me, has overcome the scruple, which, on this ground, made me recoil from.... Well! there is no use now in talking. But for you to talk of what is eligible and ineligible for me, is too absurd—indeed it is. You might be richer, to be sure—but I like it better as it is, a hundred times—I should choose it to be so, if it were left to my choice. In every other respect, using the world’s measures, ... or the measure of the angel who measured the heavenly Jerusalem, ... you are beyond me ... above me—and nothing but your love for me could have brought us to a level. My love for you could not have tried, even! Now, if I teaze you with saying such things over and over, it is the right punishment for what you said yesterday about ‘eligible marriages’—now, isn’t it?
But your conclusion then was right. For if you were twice yourself, with a duchy of the moon to boot, it would avail nothing. We should have to carry all this underground work on precisely the same. Miserable it is, nevertheless—only, I keep my eyes from that side, as far as I can. I keep my eyes on your face. Yesterday Henrietta told me that Lady Carmichael, a cousin of ours, met her at the Royal Academy and took her aside to ‘speak seriously to her’ ... to observe that she looked thin and worried, and to urge her to act for herself ... to say too, that Mrs. Bayford, an old hereditary friend of ours, respected by us all for her serene, clear-headed views of most things,—and ‘of the strictest sect,’ too, for all domestic duties,—‘did not like, as a mother, to give direct advice, but was of opinion that the case admitted certainly and plainly of the daughter’s acting for herself.’ In fact, it was a message, sent under cover of a supposed irresponsibility. Which is one of a hundred proofs to show how this case is considered exceptional among our family friends, and that no very hard judgment will be passed at the latest. Only, on other grounds, I shall be blamed ... and perhaps by another class of speakers. As for telling Mr. Kenyon, it is most unadvisable, both for his sake and ours. Did you never hear him talk of his organ of caution? We should involve him in ever so many fears for us, and force him to have his share of the odium at last. Papa would not speak to him again while he lived. And people might say, ‘Mr. Kenyon did it all.’ No—if we are to be selfwilled, let us be selfwilled ... at least, let me! for you, of course, are free to follow your judgment in respect to your own friends. And then, it is rather a matter of feeling with me after all, that as I cannot give my confidence to my father, I should refuse it to others. I feel that a little.
Henrietta will do nothing, I think, this year—there are considerations of convenience to prevent it; and it is better for us that it should be so, and will not be worse for her in the end. I wish that man were a little nobler, higher ... more of a man! He is amiable, good-natured, easy-tempered, of good intentions in the main: but he eats and drinks and sleeps, and shows it all when he talks. Very popular in his regiment, very fond of his mother—there is good in him of course—and for the rest....
Dearest ... to compare others with you, would be too hard upon them. Besides, each is after his kind. Yet ... as far as love goes ... and although this man sincerely loves my sister, I do believe, ... I admit to myself, again and again, that if you were to adopt such a bearing towards me, as he does to her, I should break with you at once. And why? Not because I am spoilt, though you knit your brows and think so ... nor because I am exacting and offensible, though you may fancy that too. Nor because I hold loosely by you ... dearest beloved ... ready at a caprice to fall away. But because then I should know you did not love me enough to let you be happy hereafter with me ... you, who must love according to what you are! greatly, as you write ‘Lurias’!
To-morrow, shall you be at Mr. Kenyon’s? To-morrow I shall hear. Nothing has happened since I saw you. May God bless you.
Your own, I am.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]
I am always telling you, because always feeling, that I can express nothing of what goes from my heart to you, my Ba; but there is a certain choice I have all along exercised, of subjects on which I would try and express somewhat—while others might be let alone with less disadvantage. When we first met, it was in your thought that I loved you only for your poetry ... I think you thought that. And because one might be imagined to love that and not you,—because everybody must love it, indeed, that is worthy, and yet needs not of necessity love you,—yet might mistake or determine to love you through loving it ... for all these reasons, there was not the immediate demand on me for a full expression of my admiration for your intellectuality,—do you see? Rather, it was proper to insist as little as possible on it, and speak to the woman, Ba, simply—and so I have tried to speak,—partly, in truth, because I love her best, and love her mind by the light and warmth of her heart—reading her verses, saying ‘and these are Ba’s,’—not kissing her less because they spoke the verses. But it does not follow that I have lost the sense of any delight that has its source in you, my dearest, dearest—however I may choose to live habitually with certain others in preference. I would shut myself up with you, and die to the world, and live out fifty long, long lives in bliss through your sole presence—but it is no less true that it will also be an ineffable pride,—something too sweet for the name of pride,—to avow myself, before anyone whose good opinion I am soliciting to retain, as so distinguished by you—it is too sweet, indeed,—so I guard against it,—for frequent allusion to it, might,—(as I stammer, and make plain things unintelligible) ... might cause you to misconceive me, which would be dreadful ... for after all, Ba’s head has given the crown its worth,—though a wondrous crown it is, too! All this means ... the avowal we were speaking of, will be a heart’s pride above every other pride whenever you decide on making such an avowal. You will understand as you do ever your own R.
On getting home I found letters and letters—the best being a summons to meet Tennyson at Moxon’s on Tuesday,—and the frightfullest ... nay, I will send it. Now, Ba, hold my hand from the distant room, tighter than ever, at about 8 o’clock on Wednesday ... for I must go, I fear—‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ &c. &c. ‘ἔα, ἔα, ἄπεχε, φεῦ.’ Then Mr. Kenyon writes that his friend Commodore Jones is returned to England in bad health and that he must away to Portsmouth and see him—so I do not go on Monday. While I was away Chorley’s brother (John Chorley) called,—having been put to the trouble of a journey hither for nothing.
I have been out this morning—to church with my sister—and the sun shone almost oppressively,—but now all is black and threatening. How I send my heart after your possible movements, my own all-beloved! Care for yourself, and for me. But a few months more,—if God shall please. May He bless you—
Ever your own
Hail and rain—at a quarter to four o’clock!
Monday 4 o’clock.
[Post-mark, May 11, 1846.]
Sweetest, I have this moment come from Town and Mrs. Jameson—the Marc-Antonio Prints kept us all the morning—and at last I said ‘There is a letter for me at home which I must go and answer.’ And now I cannot answer it—but I can love you and say so. God bless you, ever dearest. I have read your letter ... but only once. Now I shall begin my proper number of times—
Ever your very own
Monday.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]
It is too bad, or too good, or something. Almost I could reproach you, and quite would thank you! yet do not let it be so again. You are supernaturally kind ... kindestest, bestestest ... and, so, dearestest by the merest justice; only, to think of your hastening home, as if you were under an obligation to write to me in the face of the seven worlds, ... that is too much, and shall not be again—now see that it shall not. I seem to hear the rattling of the chain all this distance. And do, for the future, let it be otherwise. When you are kept in London, or in any way hindered, or unwell, ... in any case of the sort, let the vow be kept by one line, which, too late for the day’s post, may reach me the next day,—and I shall not be uneasy at eight o’clock, but wait ‘as those who wait for the morning.’ In the meanwhile how I thank you! The second dear letter comes close in the footsteps of the first, as your goodnesses are so apt to do.
Well!—and whatever you may think about Wednesday, I am pleased, and feel every inclination to ‘return thanks’ myself in reply to the bishop of Lincoln. I send the letter back lest you should want it. The worst is that you are likely to have a very bad headache with the noise and confusion—and the bishop’s blessing on the dramatists of England, will not prevent it, I fear.
Look what is inside of this letter—look! I gathered it for you to-day when I was walking in the Regent’s Park. Are you surprised? Arabel and Flush and I were in the carriage—and the sun was shining with that green light through the trees, as if he carried down with him the very essence of the leaves, to the ground, ... and I wished so much to walk through a half open gate along a shaded path, that we stopped the carriage and got out and walked, and I put both my feet on the grass, ... which was the strangest feeling! ... and gathered this laburnum for you. It hung quite high up on the tree, the little blossom did, and Arabel said that certainly I could not reach it—but you see! It is a too generous return for all your flowers: or, to speak seriously, a proof that I thought of you and wished for you—which it was natural to do, for I never enjoyed any of my excursions as I did to-day’s—the standing under the trees and on the grass, was so delightful. It was like a bit of that Dreamland which is your especial dominion,—and I felt joyful enough for the moment, to look round for you, as for the cause. It seemed illogical, not to see you close by. And you were not far after all, if thoughts count as bringers near. Dearest, we shall walk together under the trees some day!
And all those strange people moving about like phantoms of life. How wonderful it looked to me!—and only you, ... the idea of you ... and myself seemed to be real there! And Flush a little, too!—
Ah—what ... next to nonsense, ... in the first letter, this morning! So you think that I meant to complain when we first met, of your ‘loving me only for my poetry’! Which I did not, simply because I did not believe that you loved me!—for any reason. For the rest, I am not over-particular, I fancy, about what I may be loved for. There is no good reason for loving me, certainly, and my earnest desire (as I have said again and again) is, that there should be by profession no reason at all. But if there is to be any sort of reason, why one is as welcome as another ... you may love me for my shoes, if you like it ... except that they wear out. I thought you did not love me at all—you loved out into the air, I thought—a love a priori, as the philosophers might say, and not by induction, any wise! Your only knowledge of me was by the poems (or most of it)—and what knowledge could that be, when I feel myself so far below my own aspirations, morally, spiritually? So I thought you did not love me at all—I did not believe in miracles then, nor in ‘Divine Legations’—but my miracle is as good as Constantine’s, you may tell your bishop on Wednesday when he has delivered his charge.
Is it eight o’clock, or three? You write a [figure] which looks like both, or at least either.
Love me, my only beloved; since you can. May God bless you!
I am ever and wholly your
Ba.
Say how you are.
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 12, 1846.]
My Ba, your flower is the one flower I have seen, or see or shall see—when it fades ‘I will bless it till it shine,’ and when I can bless you no longer it shall fade with me and my letters and ... perhaps ... my ring. Ba, if ... I was going to say, if you meant to make me most exquisitely happy ... and you did surely mean it ... well, you succeed, as you know! And I see you on the grass, and am with you as you properly acknowledge. And by this letter’s presence and testimony, I may judge you to be not much the worse,—not fatigued ... is it so? Oh, it was a good inspiration that led you through the half-opened gate and under the laburnum, and, better still, that made you see us ‘one day walking by the trees together’—when all I shall say is,—I hope, in spite of that felicity to remember and feel this, as vividly as now.
‘For the chain you hear rattle’ ... there comes the earthly mood again and the inspiration goes away altogether! So you being Miss Barrett and not my Ba for the moment, I will give you none of my, and Ba’s, syren-island illustrations, but ask you, what a fine lady would say if you caught at her diamond necklace and cried—‘You shall wear no such chains,—indeed you shall not!’ Why even Flush is proud of his corals and blue beads, you tell me! As for me,—being used to bear sundry heavier chains than this of writing to you—owning the degradation of being, for instance, forced to respire so many times a minute in order to live—to go out into the open air so as to continue well—with many similarly affronting impositions on a free spirit ... on the whole, I can very patiently submit to write a letter which is duly read, and forgiven for its imperfections, and interpreted into a rationality (sometimes) not its own, and then answered by the sweetest hand that ever ministered to the dearest, dearest Ba that ever was imagined, or can be! Ba,—there are three Syren’s Isles, you know: I shall infallibly get into the farthest of them, a full thirty yards from you and the tower,—so as to need being written to—for the cicale make such a noise that you will not be able to call to me—which is as well, for you may ... that is, I might—break my neck by a sudden leap on the needles of rocks ... as I remember the boatman told me.
As for what you wish yesterday ... the mode of my expressing my love ... I never think of it,—I have none—no system, nor attempt at such a thing—I begin and end by saying I love you—whatever comes of it. There is one obvious remark to make however ... that unless I had loved you and felt that every instant of my life depended on you for its support and comfort,—I should never have dreamed of what has been proposed and accepted ... Your own goodness at the very beginning would have rendered that superfluous; for I was put in possession of your friendship,—might write to you, and receive letters—might even hope to see you as often as anybody—would not this have sufficed a reasonable friendship? May not Mr. Kenyon be your satisfied friend?... But all was different—and so——
So I am blessed now—and can only bless you. But goodbye, dearest, till to-morrow—and next day, which is ours. At 8—eight I conjecture my martyrdom may take place ... oh, think of me and help me! I shall feel you,—as ever. You forgot the letter after all ... can you send it? It may be convenient to produce, as I know nobody of them all—terrible it is altogether! ‘At six’ the dinner begins— —I shall get behind my brother Dramatists ... and say very little about them, even.
Kiss me, in any case, of failure, or success,—and the one will be forgotten, and the other doubled, centupled—to your own—
Tuesday.
[Post-mark, May 13, 1846.]
When you began to speak of the islands, the three islands, I thought you were going to propose that you should live in one, and Flush in one, and I in the third: and almost it was so, ... only that you took, besides, the ‘farthest’ for yourself! Observe!—always I write nonsense, when you send me a letter which moves me like this, ... dearest, ... my own!
To-day Mrs. Jameson has been here, and having left with me a proof about Titian, she comes again to-morrow to take it. I think her quite a lovable person now—I like her more and more. How she talked of you to-day, and called you the most charming companion in the world, setting you too on your right throne as ‘poet of the age.’ Wouldn’t it have been an ‘effect’ in the midst of all, if I had burst out crying? And what with being flurried, frightened, and a little nervous from not sleeping well last night, I assure you it was quite possible—but happily, on every account, I escaped that ‘dramatic situation.’ I wish ... no, I can’t wish that she wouldn’t talk of you as she does whenever she comes here. And then, to make it better, she told me how you had recited ‘in a voice and manner as good as singing,’ my ‘Catarina.’ How are such things to be borne, do you think, when people are not made of marble? But I took a long breath, and held my mask on with both hands.
You will tell me of the Marc Antonio prints,—will you not? Remember them on Thursday. Raffael’s—are they not? I shall expect ever so much teaching, and showing, and explaining ... I, who have seen and heard nothing of pictures and music, from you who know everything ... so the cicale must not be too loud for that. Did ever anyone say to you that you were like Raffael’s portrait—not in the eyes, which are quite different, but in the lower part of the face, the mouth, and also the brow? It has struck me sometimes—and I had it on my lips to-day as a question to Mrs. Jameson. I think I was mad to-day altogether. But she did not see it—(I mean my madness ... not your likeness!) [and] went away unconsciously.
Here, at last, is the letter! Careless that I was yesterday!—
And you take me to be too generous if you fancy that I proposed giving up the daily letter which is my daily bread. I meant only that you should not, for the sake of a particular post, tire yourself, hurry yourself, ... do what you did yesterday. As for the daily letter, I am Ba—not Miss Barrett. Now, am I Miss Barrett? am I not Ba rather, and your Ba? I should like to hear what will be heard to-morrow. Oh—I should like to be under the table, or in a pasty, after the fashion of the queen’s dwarf when Elizabeth was queen and Shakespeare poet. Shall you be nervous, as I was with Mrs. Jameson? Oh no,—why should you be nervous? You will do it all well and gracefully—I am not afraid for you. It is simply out of vain-glory that I wish to be there! Only ... the dramatists of England ... where in the world are they just now? Or will somebody prove ten of them,—because nought after one, makes exactly ten? Mr. Horne indeed. But I wish the toast had been ‘the poets of England,’ rather. May God bless you, any way! ‘I love you whatever comes of it.’ Yes, unless sorrow of yours should come of it, that is what I like to hear. Better it is, than a thousand praises of this thing and that thing, which never were mine ... alas!—Also, loving me so, you can be made happy with laburnum-leaves!—Dearest—most dear! Dare I speak, do you think?
Exactly at eight to-morrow, and exactly at three the next day, I shall be with you—being at any hour
Your very own.
The walk did me no harm. But you say nothing of yourself!
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, May 13, 1846.]
Dearest, dearest, I shall be with you to-morrow and be comforted—and will tell you all about everything. I am a little tired (but very well, altogether well, singularly so)—and I do feel a little about to-night’s affair, though you may not. You, indeed, to judge me by yourself! But, after all I do not greatly care ... I can but get up and stammer and say ‘thank you’ and sit down again, like my betters,—and—as I say and say,—you are at the end of everything ... so long as I find you! I hoped that Tennyson was to have been Poet-respondent—but Moxon says ‘no’ ... and, moreover, that the Committee had meant (and he supposed had acted upon their meaning) to offer me the choice of taking either qualification, of Poetry or the Drama, as mine ... but they have altered their mind. As it is ... observe—(you will find a list of Stewards in last Athenæum)—observe that they are all Bishops or Deans or Doctors ... and that all will be grave and heavy enough, I dare say. So I shall try and speak for about five minutes on the advantages of the Press over the Stage as a medium of communication of the Drama ... and so get done, if Heaven please!
I saw Tennyson last night—and ... oh, let me tell you to-morrow. Also, Severn, I saw ... Keats’ Severn, who bought his own posthumous picture of Keats, and talked pleasantly about him and Shelley (Tennyson asked me ‘what I thought of Shelley’—in so many words). Moxon’s care of him,—Tennyson, not Severn,—is the charmingest thing imaginable, and he seems to need it all—being in truth but a long, hazy kind of a man, at least just after dinner ... yet there is something ‘naif’ about him, too,—the genius you see, too.
May God bless you, my dearest dearest,—to-morrow repays for all—
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 15, 1846.]
The treader on your footsteps was Miss Bayley, who left a card and ‘would come another day.’ She must have seen you.... One of these days, ‘scirocco’ will be ‘loose’—we may as well be prepared for it. To keep it off as long as possible is all that can be. But when it comes it will not uproot my palm-trees, I think, though it should throw flat the olives.
Papa brought me some flowers yesterday when he came home ... and they went a little to my heart as I took them. I put them into glasses near yours, and they look faded this morning nevertheless, while your roses, for all your cruelty to them, are luxuriant in beauty as if they had just finished steeping themselves in garden-dew. I look gravely from one set of flowers to the other—I cannot draw a glad omen—I wish he had not given me these. Dearest, there seems little kindness in teazing you with such thoughts ... but they come and I write them: and let them come ever so sadly, I do not for a moment doubt ... hesitate. One may falter, where one does not fail. And for the rest, ... it is my fault, and not my sorrow rather, that we act so? It is by choice that we act so? If he had let me I should have loved him out of a heart altogether open to him. It is not my fault that he would not let me. Now it is too late—I am not his nor my own, any more.
This morning I have had American letters of the kindest ... from Massachusetts—and a review on my poems, quite extravagant indeed, in the Methodist Quarterly. One of these letters is so like another, that I need only tell you of them ... written too by people ... Lydias and Richards ... never heard of before by either of us. The review repeats the fabulous story in the ‘Spirit of the Age,’ about unknown tongues and a seven years’ eclipse in total darkness—but I say to myself ... after all, the real myth is scarcely less wonderful. If I have not all this knowledge ... I have you ... which is greater, better! ‘Not less wonderful’ did I say? when it is the miracle....
Oh, these people!—I am seized and bound. More to-night! from
Your own
Ba.
Say how you are.
Friday.
[Post-mark, May 15, 1846.]
The sun is warm, and the day, I suppose, is fine,—but my Ba will have been kept at home by the vile wind—most vile—even I feel it! So the spring passes away without the true spring feeling—all the blossoms are fast going already—and one’s spirits are affected, I dare say. Did you not think me intolerable yesterday with my yawning and other signs of fatigue you noticed? Well now—I do think a little is said by all that: might one not like or even love ... just short of true love, so long as the spirits were buoyant and the mind cheerful,—and when the contrary befell, some change might appear, surely!
The more I need you the more I love you, Ba—and I need you always—in joy, to make the joy seem what it is—and in any melancholy that I can imagine, more still, infinitely more, I need you—though melancholy, I certainly was not—only tired a little ... all I mean to say is, that at times when I could, I think, shut up Shelley, and turn aside from Beethoven, and look away from my noble Polidoro,—my Ba’s ring—not to say the hand—ah, you know, Ba, what they are to me!
I have to go out to-day, to my sorrow—to the Garrick Club, and a friend there. (My sister tells me we have to go to the Flower-show next Wednesday unless the day be rainy. I shall hear from Mr. Kenyon, I expect.)
Let me end the chapter we began yesterday, about speech-making and adepts in it of various kinds, by telling you what my father made me laugh by an account of, the other day ... only it should be really told, and not written. He had a curiosity to know how would-be Parliamentary members canvassed ... and as the Chamberlain of the City, Sir James Shaw, came into the Bank for that purpose (there being Livery men there, or whatever they are called, with votes) my father followed to hear how he would address people. Sir James, a gigantic man, went about as his friends directed ... or rather pushed and shoved him ... and whenever they reached an Elector the whole cortège stopped, Sir James made his speech, the friends, book and pencil in hand, recorded the promise the moment it was made, and forthwith wheeled round their candidate to the next man ... no word of speechification being to be wasted once its object accomplished, since time pressed—so now fancy. Friends (to Sir J) ‘Mr. Snooks, Sir James!’ Sir J. (with his eyes shut, and head two feet above Snooks) ‘When Charles Fox came into Parliament, he came into Parliament with a profusion of promises, of which I’ll defy Charles Fox’s best friends to say that he ever kept a single one’—(Friends twitch him)—‘Thankee Sir,’—‘Mr. Smith.’ ‘When Charles Fox came into Parliament ... thankee, Sir’—‘Mr. Thompson’—‘When Charles Fox ... thankee!’ &c. &c. And so on from man to man, never getting beyond this instructive piece of anecdotical history—till at the very last a little Elector, reaching to the great man’s elbow, let him go to the full length of the sentence’s tether from admiration of such an orator ... did not say briefly ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as the others had done. So Sir James arrived duly at ... ‘kept a single one. Thus—if ... as it were ... eh? oh!’ Here he opened his eyes with a start, missing the pushing and driving from his friends in the rear—and finding it was only this little man; he abruptly stopped ... was not going to spend more eloquence on him! There, Ba; you tell me you write nonsense ... I do the thing, the precise thing! But no more nonsense because I am going to kiss you, which is wise, and love you with my whole heart and soul forever, which is wiser, and pray you to love me, dear, dear Ba, which is the wisest! Sweetest, may God bless you,—
Your very own.
Friday Evening.
[Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]
Not even do you yawn in vain then, O you! And this, then, is what Cicero called ‘oscitans sapientia?’ The argument of the yawn ought in fact, to be conclusive!
But, dearest, if it was ‘intolerable’ to see you yawn yesterday, still less supportable was it to-day when I had all the yawning to myself, and proved nothing by it. Tired I am beyond your conceiving of ... tired! You saw how I broke off in my letter to you this morning. Well—that was Miss Heaton, who came yesterday and left the packet you saw, and came again to-day and sate here exactly three hours. Now imagine that! Three hours of incessant restless talking. At the end I was blanched, as everybody could see, and Mrs. Jameson who came afterwards for five minutes and was too unwell herself to stay, seriously exhorted me not to exert myself too much lest I should pay the penalty. And I had not been down-stairs even—only been ground down in the talking-mill. Arabel told her too, before she came up-stairs, that I was expecting a friend—‘Oh’ ... said she to me, ‘I shall go away directly anyone comes.’ And again presently ... ‘Pray tell me when I ought to go away’! (As if I could say Go. She deserved it, but I couldn’t!) And then ... ‘How good of you to let me sit here and talk!’ So good of me, when I was wishing her ... only at Leeds in the High Street, between a dissenter and a churchman—anywhere but opposite to my eyes! Yet she has very bright ones, and cheeks redder than your roses; and she is kind and cordial ... as I thought in the anguish of my soul, when I tried to be grateful to her. Certainly I should have been more so, if she had stayed a little less, talked a little less—it is awful to think how some women can talk! Happily she leaves London to-morrow morning, and will not be here again till next year, if then. She talked biography too ... ah, I did not mean to tell you—but it is better to tell you at once and have done ... only she desired me not to mention it ... only she little knew what she was doing! You will not mention it. She told me that ‘her informant about Mr. Browning, ... was a lady to whom he had been engaged ... that there had been a very strong attachment on both sides, but that everything was broken off by her on the ground of religious differences—that it happened years ago and that the lady was married.’ At first I exclaimed imprudently enough (but how could it be otherwise?) that it was not true—but I caught at the bridle in a minute or two and let her have it her own way. Do not answer this—it is nonsense, I know—but it helped to tire me with the rest. Wasn’t it a delightful day for me? At the end of the three hours, she threw her arms round me and kissed me some half dozen times and wished me ‘goodbye’ till next year. Wilson found me standing in the middle of the room, looking as she said, ‘like a ghost.’ And no wonder! The ‘vile wind’ out of doors was nothing to it.
Dearest, you are well? Your letter says nothing. Only one more letter, and then Monday. Ah—it is the sweetest of flattery to say that you ‘need’ me—but isn’t it difficult to understand? Yet while you even fancy that you have such a need, you may be sure (let Charles Fox break his promises ever so!) of your own
Ba.
Saturday.
[Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]
Then, dearest-dearest, do take Mrs. Jameson’s advice—do take care of the results of this fatigue—why should you see any woman that pleases to ask to come? I am certain that some of the men you have refused to admit, would be more considerate—and Miss Heaton must be a kind of fool into the bargain with her inconsiderateness ... though that is the folly’s very self. As for her ‘Yorkshire Tragedy,’ I hold myself rather aggrieved by it—they used to get up better stories of Lord Byron,—and even I told you, anticipatingly, that I caused that first wife of mine to drown and hang herself ... whereas, now, it turns out she did neither, but bade me do both ... nay, was not my wife after all! I hope she told Miss Heaton the story in the presence of the husband who had no irreligious scruples. But enough of this pure nonsense—I had, by this post that brings me your last letter, one from Horne—he leaves to-day for Ireland, and says kind things about my plays—and unkind things of Mr. Powell ‘a dog he repudiates for ever.’ So our ‘clique’ is deprived of yet another member!
For me, love,—I am pretty well—but rather out of spirits,—for no earthly cause. I shall take a walk and get better presently—your dear letters have their due effect, all that effect!
So, dear,—all my world, my life, all I look to or live for, my own Ba—I will bless you and bid you goodbye for to-day—to-morrow I will write more—and on Monday—return, my Ba, this kiss ... my dearest above all dearness!
Saturday Morning.
[Post-mark, May 16, 1846.]
You shall hear from me on this Sunday, though it cannot be as an answer, dearest, to your letter of to-night. But I being so wretchedly tired last night, and ‘yawning’ being, to your mind, so ‘intolerable,’ it is as well to leave a better impression with you than that ... though there is nothing to say, and the east wind blows on virulently.
The Athenæum has put me out of humour for the day ... besides. Not a word of ‘Luria’—not a word of the Literary Fund dinner, and a great, drawling carrying out of the ‘Poetry for the Million’ article ... as if all this trash could not die of itself!—as if it were not dead of itself!—That the critics of a country should set themselves to such work ... is as if the Premier of England took his official seat in the window to kill flies, ... talking, with his first finger out, of ‘my administration.’ Only flies are flies and have fly-life in them: they are nobler game than those.
Mrs. Jameson, while she was here the five minutes yesterday, talked, in an under-breath to my under-breath opposition, her opinion about the present age. ‘That the present age did not, could not, ought not, to express itself by Art, ... though the next age would.’ She is surprisingly wrong, it appears to me. There is no predominant character in the age, she says, to be so expressed! there is no unity, to bear expression.
But art surely, if art is anything, is the expression, not of the characteristics of an age except accidentally, ... essentially it is the expression of Humanity in the individual being—and unless we are men no longer, I cannot conceive how such an argument as hers can be upheld for a moment. Also it is exasperating to hear such things.
Then I do not believe, for one, that genius in the arts is a mere reflection of the character of the times. Genius precedes surely,—initiates. It is genius which gives an Age its character and imposes its own colour.... But I shall not write any more. Her paper on ‘Titian’s House at Venice,’ which she let me read in proof, and which is one of the essays she is printing now, is full of beauty and truth, and I admired it heartily. Then there is a quotation about the ‘calm, cold, beautiful regard,’ of ‘Virgin child and saint’ ... which you may remember perhaps. I know you will like the essay and feel it to be Venetian.
That you were feeling the east wind, beloved, meant that you were not well, though you have quite left off telling me a word of yourself lately. And why? It shall not be so next week,—now shall it? May God bless you. I am afraid of going down-stairs, because of the double-knocks. It will be great gain to have the loudest noises from the cicale. Except when somebody else is noisy,—which is a noise I am always forgetting, just as if it were impossible.
Your own
Ba.